The ability to block voice and chat

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

The other day I was considering why the game does not have the ability to block chat.

With so many getting offended at other players I thought… “Other games can block chat and voice… why not Conan?”

The players no longer see/hear the potentially “course” language and all should be good.

The offended player can use a “godlike” ability to banish another player from their chat and voice.

I then found out after 5000 play hours that the icons to the right of player names that I see in the player list can do just that.

So, why ban players from the game when the company went to lengths to accomodate players with extensive controls to style"ize" their playing experience?

AND take potential revenues away from themselves?

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Because those controls are there to do what you said: allow us to indulge our own personal preferences.

They’re not there to maintain a modicum of decency or to enforce the Funcom’s rules about what kind of behavior Funcom doesn’t want to see on their servers. In fact, those controls don’t work when you try to accomplish those goals.

For example, if there’s some edgelord in global chat who keeps spouting hateful garbage about, say, a certain group of people, or someone who insists on provoking others with the topic of real-life politics, you can mute them and you’ll still see the spam for anyone who didn’t mute them and takes their bait.

They don’t. You’re not paying for official servers.

Even if you did, there’s a reason why a company would deny itself potential revenue to weed out undesirable behavior.

If you can’t think of one, I propose a learning experience: go into a decent restaurant, get seated, and then start yelling racial slurs as loud as you can, non-stop. See how that works out for you.

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Second @CodeMage.

Now I am really curious about what you said because you’re trying real hard to find any angle to justify your grievance.

So what was it? Spill the beans.

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Well another reason is, until someone makes a nuisance of themselves, there’s not necessarily a reason to block them. Once they are revealed to be a tool, yeah you block them, and promptly follow it up with a zendesk saying “so and so is being a tool in chat, here’s the evidence, I blocked them but do what you will”. Kind of depends on how much of a tool someone is being on whether or not a report happens.

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I’m shocked you didn’t say to just report them to get rid of them.

I’m dead serious!

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That’s because:

  1. It’s part of the context. This new topic is just another cry for attention after the last topic about how poor, persecuted players get banned for exercising their “right” to be racist, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, bigoted, or just generally hateful to others.
  2. It’s also implied in what I said about how these controls aren’t there to enforce Funcom’s rules. The implication is that there is a mechanism for that.

I’m equally shocked you didn’t jump on the other thread to fight the oppression and defend the free speech on official servers. But it’s never too late, you can now join the dude who has been calling the rest of us mentally ill for not wanting to have to deal with other people’s garbage when we come to play a video game.

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Not at all. I just click the mute button. Or ignore it. Or laugh at it.

Nothing else needs to be added that I haven’t already said, or that others have said :slight_smile:

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Didn’t stop you from posting without adding anything :smiley:

In all seriousness, I’m glad that you have your own way of dealing with people who spew garbage and that it works for you. Fortunately, there are other ways that work for those of us who aren’t like you :+1:

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I’ve seen a lot of things and don’t seek to ban them from gaming society. I typically move on even though I’ve been daunted.

I understand I don’t know what they are going through in life and I feel its likely going to pass and it always has.

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What do you mean by spam?

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You’re more sympathetic than I am. Problems in a person’s personal life isn’t an excuse for making problems for others. We all have issues.

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This could be a point to stop and forgive. I know forgiveness isn’t a Conan canon thing but yes we all have issues. Tolerance IS a virtue of sorts.

Anyway I’m still thinking aoubt the controls we have to block. I’ve never used them but I know others that have said they use them all the time.

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Imagine, if you will, that you had the superhuman ability to make your ears stop hearing a person’s voice, in real life.

Furthermore, imagine that you’re at a bar, and some jerk starts yelling slurs and insults at everyone. But there are no bouncers – because we don’t need no stinking bouncers, right? – so nobody’s going to throw this person out.

No problem! You just use your ability to stop hearing this person. Unfortunately, some of the others at the bar get pissed off and start yelling back. Among them are several of the regulars you know and like to hang out with.

Soon enough, half the people are yelling, most of them at the person who started all the ruckus, but some of them at each other, too.

Your powers to mute are useless here. The ruckus is already well underway and it won’t be easy to get through to everyone involved and teach them how to use these same powers. And even if you do, your night out has been thoroughly ruined by this jerk.

Even worse, you know that they’ll be back every night, and no matter how hard you try to teach everyone to “be the bigger person” and just mute them, you know that a new group of people will eventually wander in on one night and let this asshat ruin the night again.

At that point, maybe you need to start wondering whether the “right” of this person to say whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, without any consequences, should be allowed to ruin countless people’s relaxation. Maybe you need to ask yourself whether rights should come with responsibilities and actions should have consequences.

Maybe the bar needs a bouncer, after all.

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In this fictional bar you could block everyone.

In the game you only have at max 39 more people to block and then unblock later. It’s only a click of the button.

You can also keep the chat box from popping up automatically with every new post. At that you’ve deaded your eyes to the spam.

Perma ban is not the answer.

You HAVE superhuman ability to block out people.

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Yes, I could. Do you think I should have to block everyone because of one troublemaker?

It’s not “only” a click of the button. It’s has network effects.

Of course it’s the answer. It’s just not an answer you like, because you did something to deserve it and now you’re trying to convince everyone that it was unfair.

But hey, I can see you basically didn’t read anything I wrote. I described, in detail, what the problem is with what you’re saying we can do and you ignored it completely, and merely restated what you said initially. Good to know where we stand.

See, the nice thing about these forums is that they’re not a bar, they’re more like the old-fashioned bulletin board. It’s much easier to ignore someone who’s trolling or intellectually dishonest, without being affected by the network effects of that decision :slight_smile:

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Do you know how else that bar full of people should have handled the person heckling and being rude?

Ignoring them.

Trolls only keep going on and on when people engage with them. Ever notice that when someone is being a toxic person in chat, if not one single person says anything to them or acknowledges them, they shut up?

Its rather super simple to deal with people like that.

Ive never head of that before. Does muting people in game cause that much in terms of performance issues?

17

I’ll admit, I don’t spend as much time in bars as I do on Conan Exiles servers, but I do know for a fact that what you wrote there doesn’t work on many Conan Exiles servers.

Ever notice how rarely that happens, especially when we’re not talking about a group of people that never changes?

Except it provably isn’t.

And the kicker is that a handful of people like you and @The_Cannibal want to force everyone else to have to deal with this your way, rather than forcing asshats to face the consequences of their asshattery.

Or to go back to the bar analogy: you want the whole bar to accommodate this one person, for no good reason.

No, it doesn’t.

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18

Here’s the thing that I just can’t get over: both of you are pretending that what the majority of us are saying is somehow controversial. Either that, or you’re pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about, or maybe that we’re talking about something else.

So let me restate it here, in the plainest, most direct terms I can find, just so you can’t freaking pretend anymore:

Hateful bullshіt – including, but not limited to racial and homophobic slurs, or threats to rape someone, or saying that all people from a certain group should be killed – is not okay, and people who think it’s fine to talk that way on official servers deserve to have their privilege of accessing the official servers taken away.

There. It’s out in the open, so you can proudly say you disagree with that and show your true face.

For the record, I don’t care that I have the “power” to mute people who talk like that. I don’t care for your nice little theories about how we could all get together and magically agree that we’ll all mute people who talk like that.

It’s all bullshіt meant to justify letting people talk like that and having us accommodate them. Why the hell should I have to accommodate them in the first place? Would you like to explain why people like that should be allowed to talk like that on a video game server?

In my experience, the only time a large group of people ignores that kind of speech is when most of that group is okay with that kind of speech.

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What’s the point of going to the bar then?

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That’s mostly because you never actually have anything to say. You just jump from thread to thread to see how you stick your nose in and troll them while making yourself look like a right proper tool in the process. Buy by all means, explain to everyone how you support the use of racial slurs and hate speech. I would love to hear your reasoning and justification for allowing such behavior in the game.

For hate speech and racial abuse? Yes undoubtedly 100% it is absolutely the correct answer. And yet, a perma ban STILL does not stop you from playing Conan Exiles. But you know what? Every single private server I can think of WILL 100% ban you for that type of behavior as well. So yeah, it’s not a Funcom issue, it a you issue.

Do you know what most bar owners will do to people who start spewing hate speech and racial slurs and the like? Well I suppose it depends on the bar, but any reputable bar owner will kick that person out and ban them from coming back. Hmm… what does that sound like? :woman_shrugging: