For the love of Help, give the freebs a chat channel!
If you send tells to the people you are trying to help instead of answering in the /help channel you can be certain you are getting your answer to the person who needs help.
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Today it degenerated into first a rapid-scrolling rantfest about CoD vs Halo and Battlefield, and then morphed into a 'God Exists/doesn't exist' shouting match.
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I do, whenever I can, but honestly, today it was scrolling so fast, that when i scrolled up to find the person who had asked a question, by the time I scrolled back down to the bottom, a large amount of text had been enttered, and basically it was impossible to keep abreast of the actual help-requests.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
Yup. I used to love helping out in the Help channel. Now, I've taken the entire tab off of all my characters' chat windows. It's sad, but that channel's totally worthless now.
Also: it's not just the freebs doing it. Not even close.
Either Paragon Studios needs to invest in GMs to moderate /help or provide the playing community with better tools for self-policing. I suspect, though, that the chocobo has already bolted the stables.
I like helping, always have, I used to add the help channel to my main chat tab so it was always viewable. In the past couple weeks I've moved it to it's own tab, then shortly after deleted that tab. It's no longer a help channel, and I feel sorry for anyone that does have a question, but I'm not wading through that garbage anymore.
I find it to be a rather lovely mess. Kind of reminds me of the old days in the alt hiarchy of Usenet.
I do, whenever I can, but honestly, today it was scrolling so fast, that when i scrolled up to find the person who had asked a question, by the time I scrolled back down to the bottom, a large amount of text had been enttered, and basically it was impossible to keep abreast of the actual help-requests.
Eco. |
Yup. I used to love helping out in the Help channel. Now, I've taken the entire tab off of all my characters' chat windows. It's sad, but that channel's totally worthless now.
Also: it's not just the freebs doing it. Not even close. |
![Frown](images/smilies/frown.gif)
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
I like to help folks out, too, and the Help chat on a couple of servers I am on scrolls by so fast I cannot keep up, much find and have any dialogue with someone needing help. I have to agree with Feycat that the channel is unworkable now, and I have taken it from the tabs that had it.
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Maybe i was just lucky until today. Or maybe, as someone in a global said, today the Trolls got the day off.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
There really needs to be something. I had to explain to a friend today why he should try this game versus the other 4 or so free ones he was optioning. I decided to lie about chat (or at least conveniently leave off the fact that CoH has a very freebie unfriendly chat system versus at least some of the games he was looking at). We'll see how long he stays after he experiences it; I may have blown my cred as the reliable "gamer with good taste" whose advice he will actually follow though. I have avoided recommending the game to many other friends until this is cleared up somehow. I just can't see them sticking around under this system, and once they are gone I'm sure we'll never get them back.
I would like a f2p chat channel just to get them off help and keep help for answering questions.
The last thing you need when you are trying to explain something is 1001 randoms looking for farms or sewer runs.
Unmoderated global chat, completely free, where anybody can set up a new account any time they need one, is and always will be a disaster. Create another channel, and you won't have a good channel and a bad channel, you'll have two bad channels. Gresham's Law. Or, as the guys from Penny Arcade taught us, the G.I.F.T.
And since this isn't a shardless game, moderators would have to moderate the Help channel on, what is it now, 15 servers? More? I lose track. So figure 80 full-time-equivalent positions just to 24x7 monitor all the Help channels and push the "silence" button on anybody who gets out of line. This game doesn't charge us enough to pay for that.
I gave up on the /help channel a looooooong time ago.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Create another channel, and you won't have a good channel and a bad channel, you'll have two bad channels. Gresham's Law.
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So figure 80 full-time-equivalent positions just to 24x7 monitor all the Help channels and push the "silence" button on anybody who gets out of line. This game doesn't charge us enough to pay for that. |
Paraphrased for the 'net as: "Bad posting drives out the good." Sometimes, though, the reverse is true. While a new unmoderated F2P channel would probably swiftly devolve into Barrens Chat, a usefully functioning /help channel would be enough of a resource to maintain its integrity if dedicated players contributed. The Fr00bs would flock to the former, while the more serious players would be able to make better use of the latter.
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For one, what would be the incentive to move form the help channel which they are currently ALREADY using?
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The past week or so, the Help channel on Protector has been working as intended.
People ask for help or advice, veteran players give it.
Sorry a bunch of loons are corrupting it for you on your server.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
It is my hope that an F2P channel would at least dilute the issue.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
All it takes is a $5 purchase to get Tells people, thats more than reasonable!!!!! This is what the Dev's want so it's what they get.
(this is sarcasm btw)
This issue isn't going to go anywhere. So all those against this simple suggestion can either get used to shooting it down in 5+ threads daily, or get on board.
Maestro Mavius - Infinity
Capt. Biohazrd - PCSAR
Talsor Tech - Talsorian Guard
Keep Calm & Chive On!
The thing that surprised me today was that until today, the Help channel (on Freedom server, no less0 was actually more full of help, advice and discussions about game mechanics and useful stuff than chaff.
Maybe i was just lucky until today. Or maybe, as someone in a global said, today the Trolls got the day off. Eco. |
For one, what would be the incentive to move form the help channel which they are currently ALREADY using?
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Even if that doesn't work, the worst case scenario is some people use the new channel and some stick with the help channel, which would at least split the load and perhaps allow people to read the help channel without it scrolling too fast.
A good way of dealing with the spam in help would be to implement a 1 post/minute limitation on help channel chat. That way needless chatter would be amazingly difficult, someone can post their question and get a tell for an answer
problem solved.
edit: Many MMO's use similar limitations on dedicated channels
Help is more and more becoming impossible to use as a Help channel. Today it degenerated into first a rapid-scrolling rantfest about CoD vs Halo and Battlefield, and then morphed into a 'God Exists/doesn't exist' shouting match. Amid all the crud were people asking legitimate questions about the game, but the channel was scrolling so fast I'm sure my attempts to answer were lost in the mess.
Can't the freebs get a global chat channel? Call it 'f2p chat' or something, and then the help channel might be actually useful again.
I know we don't want gold-sellers spamming chat, but they can already do that with help, can't they? What would the difference be?
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)