Why F2P Chat woes make me so angry...
By
akarah the hunter,
Posted on: 2011-10-06 21:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Same. Even at its worst the RMT barely registered with me (and it didn't really bother me in other games that had it FAR worse than CoH ever did). |
Originally Posted by Nihilii
I couldn't care less about RMT, I was here during the supposed worst parts and it was merely more than a blip on the radar, blown out of proportion by some forum goers. If you ask me, stopping F2P players from communicating in tells and broadcast is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
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But I recognise that some are bothered by it, which is why I favour the idea to give us a menu option to allow tells from free accounts. As a subscriber I'm willing to take my chances if it removes roadblocks from my own communications, while those who can't stand RMT could just keep them disabled.
(it's good to see the idea seems to be receiving a more positive response here than it did in beta)
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Free players can access the Friends channel. And you can also Global friend them as well. They can also receive emails.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
I've been going out of my way to group with brand new f2p players. It's kinda difficult since they, y'know, can't answer tells or anything.
The way I've been doing so is by sending tells to players in the 'Search' window asking them if they'd like to group with me. If, after a minute or so they haven't responded, I'll send them an invite. However, you're never given any kind of warning that a player can't send tells if you send them one and they don't have access. This evening, using this 'hesitant blind invite' method, I grouped with a new storm corrupter in King's Row. She'd been playing the game for three days and was really enjoying it. She'd made a really good lizard woman costume and wrote an interesting bio. I'd already run into a few frustrations trying to drop inspirations on her when she was low on health and being told she didn't have permissions to trade. But what really took the cake for me was when I sent her a tell praising her costume and bio. I realized after a few seconds she probably wouldn't be able to respond. However a few seconds later she sent a message to the group window saying, "Thank you! I'm sorry I can't figure out the tell interface." "If you hit backspace, you can reply to tells," I responded. "But you may not have access to it if you're a free-to-play player." "That's probably it. I'm poor.  " was her response.I grouped with her for quite a bit more during the evening, and was very careful to let her know exactly what was going on since she was a new player. The whole time I was seething. By keeping BASIC chat functionality away from f2p players, I realized, the restrictions are also making the game more difficult for me. I'm a paying player, a 'VIP', yet I have to go through EXACTLY the same hoops to communicate that f2p players do. This needs to be fixed. In addition to a 'Free to Play' channel, we need an option like 'Receive tells from free players'. At the very least, if I, the paying VIP, send a tell to a free player, they should be able to respond to me. |
So there ARE options. Free options at that. They just don't happen to be where you're looking.
And of course it should be mentioned that the ability to use tells costs as little as $5. This can be paid at any point after they decide to do so. If they don't decide to spend their own money, then quite frankly, they deal with what they get for FREE. The entire point of the hybrid business model is to allow folks to pay for as much as they WANT to pay for. From the business side, there HAS to be incentive to buy something or no one will pay anything anymore.
Of course, you could send your new friends $5 yourself if you REALLY want to.
It's not how many times you get knocked down that count. It's how many times you get up.
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I find that claim a bit hard to believe, I have played numerous ftp games without chat restrictions and never seen this become an issue.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
The reason the chat restrictions exist is the game would be flooded with gold farm spammers if they could access our normal chat for free. That said, it would be nice if the game was smart enough to allow a free player to respond to a tell from someone who sends them one first.
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There used to be a time when there were no restrictions on trial accounts. RMTers took SIGNIFICANT advantage of that, which lead to many of the restrictions on the old trial accounts.|
Originally Posted by Cake
I find that claim a bit hard to believe, I have played numerous ftp games without chat restrictions and never seen this become an issue.
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With that said there were already a few seen in the Help Channel.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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Every single night I logged in, I had to delete 20+ e-mails from RMT spammers. There are people STILL on /hide after all this time.
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Originally Posted by Nihilii
I couldn't care less about RMT, I was here during the supposed worst parts and it was merely more than a blip on the radar, blown out of proportion by some forum goers.
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Has this been verified?|
Originally Posted by ImpulseKing
Free players can access the Friends channel. And you can also Global friend them as well.
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I have seen one (and only one) report of Free players not being able to use the Friends channel.
Also, Trial accounts could not accept Global Friend requests (I know this one from personal experience), so I am wondering if that was carried over to Free accounts?
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I remember those times. It was not fun having to delete so many e-mails. "Blip on the radar" indeed. The argument for giving F2P players more freedom to chat with Vipers won't be won by trying to diminish and play down the real problem that was RMT spam.|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Every single night I logged in, I had to delete 20+ e-mails from RMT spammers. There are people STILL on /hide after all this time.
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I'm all for F2P players being able to chat with Vipers and Preems, based on the higher tiered players' permissions settings.
I am all for the suggested implementation of an option to accept or deny tells from Free and/or Premium players. Like others, I don't know what the technical difficulties behind this are, but it seems to me like the best way to keep RMT from becoming intrusive while also providing a very vital chat option to incoming players.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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Nope.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
It could be the size of the inspirations. Free accounts only have access to 'small' inspirations, and its not until t8 that you finally gain access to 'large' inspirations as well.
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I thought at first that it might be a size issue... But no, it turns out you can't give any Inspirations at all to a free player. I tried it with some small greens on a freebie team-mate yesterday and it still didn't work.
@Brightfires - @Talisander
That chick what plays the bird-things...
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Originally Posted by Nihilii
If you ask me, stopping F2P players from communicating in tells and broadcast is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
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Originally Posted by Santorican
This needs to be reiterated until it gets through the developer's skulls
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Agreed. They should also be able to post in the Gameplay/Technical Issues and Bugs and the Player Questions threads. They get no in game support and the Help channel is limited in scope. Many of the guide links I tried to look at gave me 404s, and one of the best things about this game was being able to get help on the forums. The severely limited ability to communicate in and out of game might turn off some players.
Yeah, I know they play for free, but that doesn't mean they won't spend money in the shop.
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I thought this was already in place. . . If its not, then that explains so much. . .
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Originally Posted by Biowraith
At the absolute minimum we need a system message informing us that the person we just sent a /tell to cannot respond.
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I've verified personally that they can be global friends. Twice in fact.|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
Has this been verified?
I have seen one (and only one) report of Free players not being able to use the Friends channel. Also, Trial accounts could not accept Global Friend requests (I know this one from personal experience), so I am wondering if that was carried over to Free accounts? |
But I'll admit I was relying on other forum posts for the Friends channel. I will check the next time I'm able.
It's not how many times you get knocked down that count. It's how many times you get up.
I find it spooky that I can be in a zone, supposedly well-populated, and shoot out something like "/b Hero tips team LFM" ... and get no response. It makes the game seem emptier than it really is.
Anyway -- I like the suggestion of having a LFG channel that's open to everyone.
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Good to know... When I was running my trial account, getting the "so-and-so has invited you to be a global friend" (or whatever the pop up window was) repeatedly by my out of game friends for about 2 weeks without being able to actually have the Accept option work was less than pleasant.
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Originally Posted by ImpulseKing
I've verified personally that they can be global friends. Twice in fact.
But I'll admit I was relying on other forum posts for the Friends channel. I will check the next time I'm able. |
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Huh. I thought this worked. A couple of Freems I played with today mentioned that they could use it.
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Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
There's already a /reply command. However, all it does is fill your chat input with something along the lines of '/tell <last person who sent you a tell>, '
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Est sularis oth Mithas
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You have zero input if someone wishes to server friend you.|
Originally Posted by Oneirohero
If I were in control I'd want at least two things done with free-player tells:
If those two things, especially the second one were put in, the free tell situation would be solved. |
It would be a simple botting exercise to get a free account to /friend and /tell RMT spam
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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I'm wondering if maybe the game distinguishes /reply from /tell. |
Originally Posted by Arnabas
Huh. I thought this worked. A couple of Freems I played with today mentioned that they could use it.
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The actual keybind version of reply (backspace by default, I think) essentially just goes "/beginchat /t $lastpersontotellyou, ", which would be the same as if you manually typed /tell, and thus treated/blocked the same way as a regular tell.
But then there's the actual typed out /reply command, which ultimately has the same end result, but is maybe viewed as a distinct separate command by the game and so potentially usable by free players?
Or those Freems were just mistaken somehow, I dunno.
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Have you been away from the game for a while? Because it has already happened, in this game.
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Originally Posted by Cake
I find that claim a bit hard to believe, I have played numerous ftp games without chat restrictions and never seen this become an issue.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I started playing a month ago.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
Have you been away from the game for a while? Because it has already happened, in this game.
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And if they spend money in the shop they are no longer Free players but are now Premium players and have different restrictions. One thing they gain as soon as they spend any money in the shop is the ability to use tells.|
Originally Posted by NancY
Agreed. They should also be able to post in the Gameplay/Technical Issues and Bugs and the Player Questions threads. They get no in game support and the Help channel is limited in scope. Many of the guide links I tried to look at gave me 404s, and one of the best things about this game was being able to get help on the forums. The severely limited ability to communicate in and out of game might turn off some players.
Yeah, I know they play for free, but that doesn't mean they won't spend money in the shop. |
Currently, I know that they are able to post in the Gameplay / Technical Issues & Bugs forum and I believe they are able to post in the Player Questions forum as well. Those two sections alone are some of the best help resources any player can get, whether they are Free, Premium or VIP.
The Help channel is only limited in that it is specific to that server. That is far more reach than Broadcast, Request, Local, Team or anything other than a global channel or tell has. Well, I'm not sure about /ac since I never use it and don't have it on any tabs.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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Then you weren't here when every player in the game had their inbox totally crammed full of gold selling emails to the point the devs had to change the rules on emailing and adding restrictions to trial accounts. They gave us an option to not get emails from people unless they were on our friends list, and made it so trials can't access tells or broadcast.|
Originally Posted by Cake
I started playing a month ago.
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If they took away these limits, spammers could just fill up broadcast and/or start sending tells to every player online.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I agree with the OP. I go out of my way to team with new players. Communication is not impossible but tedious as it stands now. Also the inspir. ban is a little much imo. As for rmt'rs, I've never received an email from any and only come across one in AP on rare occasion.
I wouldn't say that this issue makes me angry. However I agree that it is important to frame it as a limitation for paying players and not a violation of rights for the freemiums. Not allowing freemium players to reply to my tells or chat occasionally in Broadcast limits me, the paid player, because them not being able communicate back is a hassle. I end up having very silly conversations where I /tell the person "please reply to me in the Help channel" and then the whole world gets to hear whether Suzie Q Hero wants to join Oedipus Tex's team.
There are ways to limit the ability to advertise RMT services. Some of the most obvious, in place already in many other games, is a 30 second timer on the ability to send a private message, creating a second set of global channels for each zone that paid players can choose to turn off, allowing settings where paid players can ignore tells from free players, or allowing players to easily right click to ignore and/or report messages directly from the chat box. IMO the system we have right now throws the baby out with the bathwater, along with the house, the car, and the homestead tax exemption.
Furthermore, chat is not mail. A person can run a 48 hour script that gradually emails every player in the game, and they will eventually see it because email has a duration. Tells do not work like that.
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I don't know about purchasing in the shop giving the Free player Premium status and access to tells because I came back as Premium. But I do know that before subbing again I couldn't post anywhere on the forums. I tried. There was a message at the top of the forum saying that I couldn't post unless I was VIP and when I tried to post anyway I got a message that I didn't have access or something like that. |
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
And if they spend money in the shop they are no longer Free players but are now Premium players and have different restrictions. One thing they gain as soon as they spend any money in the shop is the ability to use tells.
Currently, I know that they are able to post in the Gameplay / Technical Issues & Bugs forum and I believe they are able to post in the Player Questions forum as well. Those two sections alone are some of the best help resources any player can get, whether they are Free, Premium or VIP. The Help channel is only limited in that it is specific to that server. That is far more reach than Broadcast, Request, Local, Team or anything other than a global channel or tell has. Well, I'm not sure about /ac since I never use it and don't have it on any tabs. |
I couldn't get in-game support, tried to post in the Tech/Bug section and wasn't allowed, so I re-subbed in order to post. I was going to re-sub eventually anyway so that wasn't a big deal. If other Premium players are able to post I'd like to know why some could and some couldn't. There's a glitch somewhere.
At least when we couldn't pass inspirations to the opposite faction there was some kind of logic as to why we couldn't. A hero not being able to give an inspiration to another hero just because one of them isn't paying money makes no sense at all. Unless they expect the free player to spend $15 while they're in the mission so they can receive an inspiration.
I think free players should be restricted on what channels they can use to keep the RMTers in check, but if *I* send someone a tell they should at least be able to hit backspace to respond to me.
A free play chat channel that is effectively a clone of broadcast would be nice. You can remove channels from your chat window so you don't have to see them, so if you want to avoid the dirty freebies you can, and they will be able to communicate with people farther than 30 feet away.
I can imagine how frustrating it has to be to not be able to talk to all the people you can see zipping by you. There was one poor guy that got stuck in the game geometry and couldn't figure out how to extricate himself. He'd been there shouting for help in Local for 15 minutes before I happened to pass by and hear him. I explained the /stuck command and all was well, but if there were more places he could have asked he wouldn't have been sitting there that long (I also told him about the help channel, as he didn't realize he could talk in that one too)
See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.